I'm glad you asked. Countdown uses this free online dictionary to adjudicate words (it's certainly free in the UK anyway). Obviously there might be some doubt about whether certain mass noun plurals etc. are valid, but for headwords and your basic inflections, this is where you go.

The reason I'm posting this is that a lot of experienced posters (people who should know better) go into the spoilers thread having got some word at home and ask if it's valid. Well, where do expect the people you're asking are going to find out? They use the dictionary. The free dictionary that you can use yourself. So do it.

Also, VASELINE? Susie disallowed recently in a game, but then offered in Catsdown the other night. Has the dictionary changed in the interim? I don't understand. Good idea for a thread though Gev, people can check in here now to see if their word has been offered before.

Jon Corby wrote:Also, VASELINE? Susie disallowed recently in a game, but then offered in Catsdown the other night. Has the dictionary changed in the interim? I don't understand. Good idea for a thread though Gev, people can check in here now to see if their word has been offered before.

VASELINE is weird - it's marked as a trademark but it's lowercase. I would say the trademark supersedes the case, as many trademarks have a lowercase initial letter anyway (ebay to name but one - I have always thought of it styled as eBay but maybe I imagined it?).

That being said, if Apterous allows it, I would be offering it, whether it should be allowed or not. Paineder/est is a horrific example of this - no-one's going to throw away the 9 though.

Adam Dexter wrote:That being said, if Apterous allows it, I would be offering it, whether it should be allowed or not. Paineder/est is a horrific example of this - no-one's going to throw away the 9 though.

Innis and I made a suicide pact before our 30BC game in the event that the word LOSINGEST was available in a letters selection.

Adam Dexter wrote:That being said, if Apterous allows it, I would be offering it, whether it should be allowed or not. Paineder/est is a horrific example of this - no-one's going to throw away the 9 though.

Innis and I made a suicide pact before our 30BC game in the event that the word LOSINGEST was available in a letters selection.

Adam Dexter wrote:That being said, if Apterous allows it, I would be offering it, whether it should be allowed or not. Paineder/est is a horrific example of this - no-one's going to throw away the 9 though.

Innis and I made a suicide pact before our 30BC game in the event that the word LOSINGEST was available in a letters selection.

This word is genuinely used a fair bit in American sport. Although WINNINGEST is moreso. I know it looks ridiculous, but it's actually fairly useful.

Eoin Monaghan wrote:
He may not be liked on here, but you have to give some credit to Mark

You'd think that with an online dictionary you could just enter a word in the search box, and if it's a word then it'll find it, and if it isn't then it won't.

Sadly, it doesn't seem that this is the case with ODO. For instance, POETRIES brings up POETRY, even though Susie once told us there's no sense in which POETRY can become a count noun. And the plural of SALMON is explicitly given as "same" (I'll leave it up to you how to interpret that), but nonetheless SALMONS brings up SALMON. On the other hand, PETALOIDS and CURRYS don't find anything. Indeed, there are not only false positives but also false negatives, such as MATEYS.

Stewart Gordon wrote:You'd think that with an online dictionary you could just enter a word in the search box, and if it's a word then it'll find it, and if it isn't then it won't.

Sadly, it doesn't seem that this is the case with ODO...

I'm sure that when the ODO was being put together there were many competing requirements. It's hard to imagine the needs of Countdown being the highest priority.

I can imagine. The Countdown community would have just been a small bunch of people requiring consistency from a dictionary. There would have been other people of higher priority demanding inconsistency.

Clive Brooker wrote:I'm sure that when the ODO was being put together there were many competing requirements. It's hard to imagine the needs of Countdown being the highest priority.

What other requirement would have competed with this one, exactly?

Gavin Chipper wrote:I can imagine. The Countdown community would have just been a small bunch of people requiring consistency from a dictionary.

It isn't just the Countdown community that would benefit from such consistency. It would be anybody wanting to use it as a dictionary for any word game, or indeed any random member of the public wanting to know whether something's a word or not.

Adam Dexter wrote:VASELINE is weird - it's marked as a trademark but it's lowercase. I would say the trademark supersedes the case, as many trademarks have a lowercase initial letter anyway (ebay to name but one - I have always thought of it styled as eBay but maybe I imagined it?).

Is the rule that the word must start with a lowercase letter, or that the word must be composed entirely of lowercase letters?

(It's weird that we play the game with uppercase letters and yet have this rule. But then again, the same is true of many other games....)

Clive Brooker wrote:I'm sure that when the ODO was being put together there were many competing requirements. It's hard to imagine the needs of Countdown being the highest priority.

What other requirement would have competed with this one, exactly?

Gavin Chipper wrote:I can imagine. The Countdown community would have just been a small bunch of people requiring consistency from a dictionary.

It isn't just the Countdown community that would benefit from such consistency. It would be anybody wanting to use it as a dictionary for any word game, or indeed any random member of the public wanting to know whether something's a word or not.

Adam Dexter wrote:VASELINE is weird - it's marked as a trademark but it's lowercase. I would say the trademark supersedes the case, as many trademarks have a lowercase initial letter anyway (ebay to name but one - I have always thought of it styled as eBay but maybe I imagined it?).

Is the rule that the word must start with a lowercase letter, or that the word must be composed entirely of lowercase letters?

(It's weird that we play the game with uppercase letters and yet have this rule. But then again, the same is true of many other games....)

Adam Dexter wrote:VASELINE is weird - it's marked as a trademark but it's lowercase. I would say the trademark supersedes the case, as many trademarks have a lowercase initial letter anyway (ebay to name but one - I have always thought of it styled as eBay but maybe I imagined it?).

Is the rule that the word must start with a lowercase letter, or that the word must be composed entirely of lowercase letters?

(It's weird that we play the game with uppercase letters and yet have this rule. But then again, the same is true of many other games....)

Perhaps the rule specifies proper nouns rather than whether the word starts with or contains any capitals, so then the question would be: Is eBay a proper noun?

Philip Wilson wrote:Apparently it isn't! I still wouldn't want to risk it though!

a response to this:

Philip Wilson wrote:Perhaps the rule specifies proper nouns rather than whether the word starts with or contains any capitals, so then the question would be: Is eBay a proper noun?

?

Then you say it's according to the first link in the thread. This thread? So this link? Or maybe the entry for Proper Noun (where it says a proper noun has an initial capital letter)? If you meant that, you've been a bit cryptic about it, especially since you posted your conversation with yourself immediately after the clarification I gave saying it wouldn't be valid. From the Apterous link:

Just on iPad, eBay.... contestant guidelines state explicitly that words containing capitals are not allowed. eBay is the example cited.

So unless you think this is a lie, it's case closed, regardless of what the definition of a proper noun is according to Oxford dictionaries. There's no "I still wouldn't want to risk it though" about it. It's simply not valid!

Correct. My point was that an online dictionary for general use probably wants to do things like pushing you towards what it thinks you meant if you enter an invalid word. It will also devote a lot of its energy to the meanings of the words it lists, something Countdown has little interest in, and perhaps the minute detail about exactly what derivatives are or aren't valid will be seen as a lesser issue.

Consistency is obviously good, no dispute there. However, it isn't always black and white. With comparatives and superlatives, for example, the fact that the dictionary doesn't specify the -ER or -EST form is often guidance as much as anything.

Philip Wilson wrote:Apparently it isn't! I still wouldn't want to risk it though!

a response to this:

Philip Wilson wrote:Perhaps the rule specifies proper nouns rather than whether the word starts with or contains any capitals, so then the question would be: Is eBay a proper noun?

Yes it was a response to: 'is eBay a proper noun?' and apparently it isn't because it's a verb.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Then you say it's according to the first link in the thread. This thread? So this link?

Yes, this thread, and that link.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Or maybe the entry for Proper Noun (where it says a proper noun has an initial capital letter)? If you meant that, you've been a bit cryptic about it, especially since you posted your conversation with yourself immediately after the clarification I gave saying it wouldn't be valid. From the Apterous link:

Just on iPad, eBay.... contestant guidelines state explicitly that words containing capitals are not allowed. eBay is the example cited.

So unless you think this is a lie, it's case closed, regardless of what the definition of a proper noun is according to Oxford dictionaries. There's no "I still wouldn't want to risk it though" about it. It's simply not valid!

Nope, it wasn't a response to that, but sorry for being cryptic anyway. However if everyone knew or remembered every rule nobody would ever risk anything, and they do. So just to clarify what I meant, if the letters E B A and Y were in the selction and I couldn't see another word that was either safer or longer [unlikely situation I guess with those letters, but anyway] even if I knew eBay was a verb and not a proper noun, I wouldn't risk it because it has a capital letter, albeit not at the beginning.
I know it was a bit confusing answering my own post, sorry for that, but I remembered after wondering if eBay is a proper noun that I could look it up and find out! Dohhh